Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

if you really need to you could get some labels from any walmart they come in packs each strip is about a half inch wide you could write the notes you want and cut them and stick them between the frets under the strings.

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

Russell_Harding wrote:

if you really need to you could get some labels from any walmart they come in packs each strip is about a half inch wide you could write the notes you want and cut them and stick them between the frets under the strings.

Thanx, I'm in australia & we don't have walmart [yet] - guess the old sticky tape will have to do!

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

Please do not take this the wrong way as I am a guitar noob myself.

I am trying to learn theory as well as many of my favorite songs. I am doing this not because I want to write but because I have a need to know what I am doing as I am doing it. I am now in the process of learning the notes on the fretboard as well as learning to read music. I have found that if I try shortcuts I end up shortchanging myself.

I am doing this exercise when I practice: I start on the low E and as I move my fingers down the fretboard on the string I name the notes: (open) E, F, (F)minor, G, (G) Minor, A, etc...I will do this with all the strings down to the 12th fret, while alternate picking the strings to help with my picking skills. I will also look at a chord or picture a chord and determine what notes are played in that chord. This is helping me to learn where I am on the fretboard and has the added advantage of not defacing my fretboard with adhesive.

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

you might mess up your playing if you put tape on the frets,you might try to make a chart that can be seen easly while you are playing. welcome to the sight, and I like your name you are using.

Thanx bunbun & dino - sound advice, maybe I should take a different tack to learning the fretboard; my initial self-teaching idea was to transpose all five Am Pentatonic patterns onto the entire neck using the relevant notes on plastic adhesives as per:

It seemed to me that, by using this method, it would be much easier to work out the lead patterns over any chord progressions in the keys of Am & it's correlate Major C(?) by just diddling around on the fretboard until you got the same approximate sound. I know this can be done with a 'fretlight' guitar, but my method would be a lot cheaper.

As for the name - I initially opted for Link Elvis Lonnie Stevie-Ray HENDRIX ... but though that might seem a little too aspirational.

Speaking of Link Wray - does anyone know where to find the TAB for 'Deuces Wild'??

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

Just my two bits . . . any crutch you use like stickies on the fretboard . . . just have to be unlearned when you remove the stickies . . . then u gotta worry about getting the glue off. In the time that you spend making the crutch, you can rote memorize. As far as the Am pentatonic scale pattern is good to memorize, then its just a matter of moving higher or lower to do Bm pentatonic, then Cm pentatonic and so on. Remember 10,000 repetitions will embed any pattern in muscle memory, and you can do 10,000 repetititions of almost anything inside of 3 hours or so. It seems like a lot, but any accomplished guitarist will agree that nothing replaces repetition and memorization.

Ok, I'm no master, but I can't stress repetition, repetition, repetition, like going from string to string and name the note of each position. I make time while watching television to do this exercise. Oh well, for what it is worth!

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

My two penn 'orth. Putting stickers on your fretboard is likely to make your guitar feel awful to play. I'd also expect them to wear off in no time as you play and when they do you'll be left with a sticky fretboard until the glue wears off.

As for naming the notes as you play them I could be wrong but if I am it'll be 25 years of theory wasted but the notes on the bottom E string are E, F, F#, G, G# , A etc etc. I don't think there's any such thing as a minor note, only a minor chord!

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

you might mess up your playing if you put tape on the frets,you might try to make a chart that can be seen easly while you are playing. welcome to the sight, and I like your name you are using.

Thanx bunbun & dino - sound advice, maybe I should take a different tack to learning the fretboard; my initial self-teaching idea was to transpose all five Am Pentatonic patterns onto the entire neck using the relevant notes on plastic adhesives as per:

It seemed to me that, by using this method, it would be much easier to work out the lead patterns over any chord progressions in the keys of Am & it's correlate Major C(?) by just diddling around on the fretboard until you got the same approximate sound. I know this can be done with a 'fretlight' guitar, but my method would be a lot cheaper.

You're on the right track. The thing about that pattern is that it is transposable, just as you suspect. Thats the entire point of it.

What you need to do is learn where the roots are, and the easiest way to do that is to learn *how* that scale is built. Stop thinking of that pattern as the "Am pentatonic" pattern, and just think of it as the "pentatonic" pattern. It's only Am if you start it on A.

FYI, That pattern works for both major and minors, too. All you do is change the root. If you want to play C major pentatonic, just start on the II.

Anyway, I won't comment on the stickers as a learning tool, but I will as someone who doesn't want to see you manky up your fretboard. I'd keep them off for that reason alone.

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

Thanx hal9ksrc, Buzzwagon & Jerome - I just had an epiphany, my initial concept which seemed terrific at the time, was actually a really bad idea - even though I've only got a $100-oo pawnshop clone with buzzy frets to 'manky-up', cf:

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

You're gonna be hugely disappointed when you figure out why all those songs are masterpieces. Most of those songs are three or four chords, tops. The reason they sound awesome is because the guys playing them know their way around those three or four chords. Red House, for example, is a simple 12 bar blues. Jimi just knew how to play a 12 bar blues. Point being, most songs, period, are three or four chords, tops.

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

... The reason they sound awesome is because the guys playing them know their way around those three or four chords....

Verily. I just paid Musicnotes US$7.00 to download the sheet music for 'Can't You See'; three chords - D, Dsus2/C, G - ie. plain vanilla I - bVII-IV

Clearly, it's what the musos do re. embelleshing those three simple chords, that's complex ... as per the following post from a prof. muso: [BTW there's a great post by Ed King re. Sweet Home Alabama on the same site] ________________________________________________________ #11 (permalink)Tim BowenPoster Extraordinaire

Join Date: Mar 2003Location: Atlanta, GeorgiaAge: 50Posts: 5,153

"I have to chuckle a bit because "Can't You See" is usually a tune I toss out if the Skynyrd faithful have a full head of steam and a bit too much sauce under the belt. Last night's gig was among the very best of the year, and after several encores, the room wouldn't let us leave. For the last one, my partner decided to launch into the Marshall Tucker tune, and I leaned over and said "You're kidding, right?", to which he replied, "Nah, milk it to death, they'll love it."

It's tough to remember everything I played since it was spontaneous, but I'll try. The first solo was very Toy Caldwell, and peppered with some of my fave butt-simple Floyd Cramer slip note piano chordal stuff. Had the tune showed up earlier in the evening, I'd have probably left it at this. The second solo just went on and on and ON. I started with sort of a Richard Thompson type approach with a Celtic bent that took advantage of open string drones, and I made use of harmonics and some ear tweaker 'in-between' bends. Then I started playing some things out a Bm7b5 arpeggio along with some chromatic stuff (I guess I was thinking "southern rock jazz" at this point). I then started playing some melodies with octaves and diatonic sixths and "tenth" (3rd) intervals. After that, I upped the gain and went back into Toy Caldwell mode, skirting between major, minor, and mixo stuff. Ordinarily, I like to resolve the tension and bring it back down by copping that signature flute riff, but as the room was aching to be brought over the top, I started playing some melodies in fourths and then did this (BS-approved) triplet root-octave-fifth chromatic figure that kept ascending and descending, until it finally landed on a D5 chord. At this point, I reached down and tweaked the MXR Carbon Copy toward flying saucer noises and fart/splat sounds through the speakers. The delay allowed me to hit the mute button with lots of ambient trail hanging over afterward, which in turn allowed me to put down the instrument, leave the room with the desired "WTF was that?" effect, and walk outside to get some air while there was still some noise emanating from the rig."_______________________________________________________

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

Stumbled across this thread while looking for a similar crutch and I found this here: http://www.dontfret.com/notemap.html. I'm all the way out in South Africa so shipping the damn thing here would cost more than it's worth. I'm thinking of crafting one by hand by punching a few coloured sheets of paper, removing the strings from the axe, licking them down then taping them down with good old sellotape. I'll rip them off once it's all commited to memory. But I wanna jam NOW!

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

Kudos to Steelstrings.Learning every note on every fret is a daunting project for most folks.Breaking the task up into manageable pieces makes a ton of sense.Learn two? frets at a time every day or week.I memorize lyrics by jotting brief notes for two songs on each side of a 3 by 5 card. When taking a heart healthy walk, I alternate reciting lyrics between the two songs. As I tire of one, I work on the other for a while.Three miles later, I have them down enough to add the guitar line and sing along without reading anything.

Re: Fretboard stickers to quickly identify musical notes

My main guitar doesn't have any dots on the fretboard or on the side of it. It's fussy I know, but I find them ugly. I have a tiny dot of blu tack at the 7th fret, then I always know where everything is.

You could make a big grid, similar to a chord diagram, with each note (by letter name) written on it. Look for patterns to learn notes faster. Try to find patterns and learn where the same notes are on different strings, e.g. e string fret 1, B string 6 and G string 10 are all the same F.